A
letter from Canada, as it were. Those in the United States who assume
that Canada is irrelevant should realize that the social and moral
policies of the country tend to move south rather quickly. In other
words, what begins in Canada often spills over to the U.S. and is
eventually embraced by Americans.

The abortion issue is
particularly pertinent because many politicians on the American
political left and within organized liberalism revere the Canadian model
and want to replicate it. That model includes publicly funded abortion
at any stage of a pregnancy. If a woman is under age and living at home,
the medical authorities have no obligation to inform her parentsand
may be prosecuted if they do so. To publicly question this
now-established wisdom is to risk media and political crucifixion, and
even the country’s Conservative Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has said
that he has no intention of reopening the abortion debate.

Until recently it looked as though it couldn’t get any worse. But we were wrong.

My
friend Fr. Stefano Penna, who holds a doctorate in philosophy from
Yale, is one of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and balanced men I
know. A native of Saskatchewan and the Canadian prairies, he is now in
charge of training Catholic seminarians for nearly all of western
Canada. He wrote recently to me. “Just sent this to the liberals: four
generations of Liberal voters ended for my family today. Justin's
anti-free speech and anti-life diktat is appalling. You just lost the 26
votes of my clan. I will have no choice as a lecturer and teacher who
engages over 10,000 people a year across Canada but to vocally advocate
against Trudeau liberalism.”

The reason for Fr. Penna’s letter was
that the leader of Canada’s Liberal Partylong considered the natural
party of governmentpublicly stated that he will no longer accept as
Liberal candidates for the Canadian House of Commons any men or women
who object in any way to abortion on demand. Justin Trudeau, son of
former Liberal leader and Canadian Prime Minister Pierre, did not say
that he was pro-choice or that his party supported abortion; rather, he
said that anyone who did not blindly support the pro-abort view would
not be welcome within the party ranks. Trudeau may well be Canada's next
Prime Minister, and his party might rule Canada for many years to come.

Justin
Trudeau is a Catholic, as have been almost all of the leaders of the
Liberal Party, under which so many of the Church’s moral beliefs have
been attacked, condemned, opposed, and removed from our country’s way of
life. Trudeau was married as a Catholic, receives the sacraments, and
often describes himself as a faithful member of the Roman Catholic
Church. He is seldom reprimanded when he does so.

The New
Democratic Party (NDP), a socialist and social democratic party that has
governed several provinces, is currently the federal opposition but has
never formed a national government. As soon as Trudeau made his latest
comments, the NDP immediately made it clear that it also banned pro-life
candidates. The NDP leader’s enthusiasm in making it clear that it
wasn’t only the Liberals who had enshrined baby slaughter was, frankly,
nauseating.

That leaves Canada’s Conservative Party, currently the
largest party in parliament and the reigning government. There are
hundreds of pro-life Conservative or Tory candidates, dozens of pro-life
Tory MPs, and several pro-life Tory cabinet ministers. All of that is
encouraging, and it is difficult to imagine a time when pro-lifers would
be banned from running for the Conservatives. That said, however, the
one or two Tory MPs who have dared to introduce even mildly pro-life
legislation have been quickly criticized and even ostracized by the
party machine, and even senior ministers who are pro-life say little, if
anything, in public about their views. It’s also clear that at the
grassroots level, there are campaigns in certain areas to remove
pro-life candidates and replace them with socially liberal alternatives.

The
irony is that millions of Canadians oppose abortion but have long voted
Liberal. They’ve had to hold their noses a little but have explained
and justified their decision by pointing out that while Liberals have
been dreadful on the issue, they have never persecuted pro-lifers or
stopped them from running as MPs. Actually, that’s not entirely true,
but there were just enough pro-life Liberal MPs to make the dubious
claim appear genuine. Liberal pro-life voters also argued that the NDP
was worse and that Conservatives refused to genuinely oppose abortion.
That is all true, but now everything has changed. In the name of
protecting choice, the Liberals have removed actual choice from every
Liberal man or woman who objects to any aspect of abortion.

But
liberalism and support for the Liberal Party run deep among Catholics in
Canada, and I know some senior Catholic clergy who still go weak at the
knees at the mere thought of Justin Trudeau and his clan. Put directly,
the Catholic Church’s leaders in Canada have for too long appeared to
prefer establishment acceptance to standing firm and loud on central
issues. One or two [bishops] make their concerns clear, but they are few
and their opposition amounts to words rather than action. Of course, it
is difficult to take on a leading and powerful politician and, yes,
doing so will result in problems and conflict. But how much worse must
it get before the Church’s religious and lay leadership draws a line in
the sand and makes it clear that the Liberals have been knocking down
Catholic sandcastles for decades?

There was a time when Catholics
voted Liberal because they were Irish or other immigrants and viewed the
Conservatives as the party of wealth, Anglicanism, and even
anti-Catholicism. But that was a long, long time ago. Yet Catholic
voting patternsnot unlike those of other communitiestend to be very
slow to change. Combine this with years of appalling catechesis of
ordinary Catholicsmany of whom have no idea what they are to believe,
why they are supposed to believe it, or why the Church opposes abortion
specificallyand we have a recipe for disaster.

This is all the
more reason for the episcopacy to speak out: not with anger or as
politicians but with love and as shepherds. Souls of both the born and
the unborn are in colossal danger.

The United States is not
Canada, of course, but the two nations have numerous, even eerie,
similarities. When we see our religious leaders appearing to be just a
little more friendly with anti-life politicians than is absolutely
necessary, we must politely but firmly remind them of their role; when
allegedly Catholic politicians tell us that they support us, but there
really is nothing they can do to protect the unborn, insist that there
certainly is and that plenty of braver people are prepared to take their
places in public office.

Friendly CanadaCatholic Canadahas said
too little about life for too long and now faces the consequences. It’s
too late to wait and to remain silent; it was too late a very long time
ago indeed.

About the Author

Michael Coren

Michael Coren is the host of The Arena, a nightly television show broadcast on the Canadian network Sun News, and a columnist whose work appears in numerous publications across Canada. He is the author of 16 books, the most recent of which is Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity (Signal Books/Random House). His website is www.michaelcoren.com, where his books can be purchased and he can be booked for speeches.

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